


But I Made A...

by Lejays17



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 08:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lejays17/pseuds/Lejays17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Promises, choices, decisions. Everyone has to make one at some point in their lives.</p><p>A series of vignettes from different character's POVs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I’ve Made My Choice – Seamus Finnegan

**Author's Note:**

> These a positively ancient :).
> 
> Written pre-DH, so fail at canon in some places

Starting my seventh year at Hogwarts is strange. Most of the students haven’t returned; their parents want to keep them “safe” at home. Like anyone is safe now! Mam was shocked that I defied her over it, but I’m seventeen now, and an adult in the Wizarding world. 

Sharing a room with Harry Potter for six years, and not knowing what was happening was impossible. I didn’t believe him for a long while – because Mam didn’t – but after what happened at the end of last year…. That truly made a believer out of me.

It’s so quiet here in the common-room. There are maybe twenty students in the whole of Gryffindor Tower, and Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are the same. Slytherin has about ten students, and they’re shunned by the rest of the school. You don’t know if they’re spies, and it’s safer not to talk to them at all.

Harry, Ron and Hermione are off somewhere huntin’ something – Ginny knows what, but she ain’t sayin’ anything. Dean, Parvati and Lavender haven’t returned. Neville spends his free time in the Library learnin’ Defence spells and charms (he knows more about them than anyone but Harry). And me, I spend my time wonderin’ whether I’ve done the right thing coming back. I’m worried about Mam and Da – Mam’s never been good at Defense, and she’s gotta protect the both of them.

But I’ve made my choice, and I’ll stick to it, for good or bad. But everything has changed, and I’m scared.


	2. They Made a Choice...  - Neville Longbottom

I wish Hermione was here. She’s so good with helping me remember things. I’ve got all the books we used when Harry was teaching us in Fifth year, but I can’t remember half of what we did then, and I need to. 

Madam Pince looked at me funny when I asked her which the table Hermione used for studying was; she told me it was next to the Restricted Section towards the rear of the library. I should have known this was her preferred desk; it’s partially hidden, which makes it perfect for all the research she does. I have this silly idea that maybe sitting at her table will make it easier to make things stick in my mind. 

I feel bad that I leave Seamus alone all the time in the common room, but I need peace and quiet to help me remember things more easily, and he can’t stay quiet for more than five minutes at a go. We had a talk late one night, after the Library had closed, and he told me how worried he was about his parents. I offered to teach him some of the defensive spells I’d actually managed to remember, but he said his Mam wasn’t any good at them – he’d tried to teach her some of the spells Harry had taught us, but she couldn’t remember them in a pinch. 

I nearly told him that Mum and Dad are in St Mungo’s, that they don’t really know who I am, but I didn’t. I’ve kept it a secret for so long that I can’t tell people now. 

Sighing, I open another basic Defense Spells book and try to force the jinxes into my memory. As much as I love my parents for trying to protect me from that evil hag Bellatrix, I sometimes curse them for the damage it did to my mind. 

But they made a choice, for better or for worse, and I have to live with the consequences.


	3. I Made a Promise...  - Ginny Weasley

I don’t want to be here! I know what Harry is doing is vital, but I don’t see that leaving me behind to fret about the three of them is helping. I mean, love is what is going to defeat He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and I’m sure that I love Harry as much as Ron and Hermione do. 

Hardly anyone has come back to Hogwarts this year. Like they’d be any safer at home against Death-Eaters! Mum wanted me to stay at home with them at the Burrow, but Dad came to my rescue when he said that with them working for the Order, they wouldn’t be able to look after me all the time – not that I need to be looked after! – and at least the wards at Hogwarts are the strongest they can be. 

Seamus is watching me again. He doesn’t have anyone to talk to, with Neville in the Library all the time and no-one else from his year coming back. But he won’t talk to me cos of Dean and what happened last year. He looks worried all the time, and not just about school and NEWTS either. 

I wonder what Harry is doing right now? I wish I was with him… 

But I made a promise, and I’ll stick with it, even though I’m terrified for him.


	4. A Decision Not Made  - Draco Malfoy

I can do it! I can! 

I thought that is would be like being in the Inquisitor’s Squad last year, but it is infinitely worse. You can’t hide; the Mark makes sure of that. And the pain when he marks you as his! 

Why didn’t I listen to Mother when she tried to stop me? But I was determined to follow Father’s plan for me, like Aunt Bellatrix told me. I didn’t know then that my Aunt doesn’t care about anyone but the Dark Lord, and she will do or say anything to further his plans. 

And by the time I realised this, I’d been marked and given my task. Why I boasted that I could easily get my fellow-Death Eaters into Hogwarts, past all the wards that Dumbledore set, I can’t remember. A need to avenge our family’s name after the mess Father had made with Potter at the Department of Mysteries? 

I push through the door at the top of the tower, wand-arm outstretched. My quarry is leaning against the parapet, looking weak and not really seeing me. 

“Expelliarmus!” A shout more in hope than anything, but the small piece of wood goes flying over the edge and into the darkness. 

A feeling of cold horror creeps down my spine. After all my attempts, all my plans, all my boasts, Dumbledore is at my mercy. 

And I can’t do it. 

He’s talking to me and I’m answering, but all I can concentrate on in my wavering wand. He’s an old, broken man, and I don’t understand why the Dark Lord is so afraid of him. He’s telling me that Snape is on his side, and I yell back that he’s a double-agent, always loyal to the Dark Lord. 

He doesn’t believe me, and it will be the death of him. 

Make a decision! Make it, and take my Father’s place at the Dark Lord’s right hand. 

But I hesitate too long, and the decision is taken from me.


	5. We Made a Vow - Fleur Delacour

I perch on the moonlit windowsill, watching my Bill – my husband, I correct myself quickly – sleep. The soft moonlight forms strange shadows over his face, a legacy of the attack by Fenrir Greyback the night Dumbledore was killed. I force my thoughts away from that night; it is not something I wish to dwell over on my wedding night. 

But they slip back in again; it is hard not to remember when I am confronted by them each time I look at Bill’s scarred face. I do try, because it hurts Bill when others stare and make comments, even if he does not show it. His family are used to them now, rarely do they make comments that draw attention them. This is something I have learned and taken to heart – as much as the family bicker amongst themselves, they will close ranks against any outsider who they feel will threaten the family in any way. And as one who was an outsider until that night, it is a formidable wall to break through. But once you are inside, you are given the same “protection” from outsiders, and I am more grateful than I can say for this. 

Bill murmurs and screws his face up, as if in pain. Even though the Healers have said that Bill had suffered no lasting effects of the attack – except the ever-present scars, of course! – we believe that something has infected him as he is always more restless on nights of the full moon, as if the beast within is trying to escape. 

With a sigh, I slip off the windowsill and close the curtain. Immediately Bill quietens as the light is no longer shining directly on him. I’m still too restless to go back to bed, and would have preferred to stay on the sill, but I cannot let my momentary selfishness override Bill’s need for untroubled sleep. Learning to live with each other’s foibles is part of what we must do to make our lives together work. 

We both have to learn ignore the ill-bred people who comment openly about Bill being “trapped” by a part-Veela into marriage, or myself feeling obliged (or bullied, as one charming old aunt put it!) into marrying someone who will be visibly scarred for life. These people don’t realise, or want to know, that it is not the external appearances which made us fall in love with each other, it was our common thoughts, dreams, ideas. And that’s the most important thing of all, not the fickle outside which will fade with time. 

And we made a vow today to love one another no matter what – and really, I am beautiful enough for the both of us.


	6. Not the First Choice - Lavender Brown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not as introspective as the others, but I don't think Lavender's built that way... Plus I was getting down in the dumps writing all the angst-filled other ones, so am trying for a little more humour. Please let me know if I've succeeded or failed in my challenge

Knit, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, turn. 

Knit, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, turn. 

Knit, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8… Eight! Curse it, I’ve dropped two stitches! 

I hurl the lavender-coloured ball of wool across the dormitory, closely followed by the small amount of knitting I had finished and the two needles. How can Miss Know-it-all sit in the noisy common-room and chat, and still manage to make scarves and hats with no problems, and I can’t do it while sitting alone in a quiet room? It’s not fair! 

Sighing, I scramble off my bed and collect the knitting and ball of wool from underneath Parvati’s bed. I would hate it if she knew I was trying to make something for Ron for Christmas, instead of buying him a gift from one of the catalogues that litter our side of the room. 

But I know that he likes the jumpers his Mum gives him every year; they’re always maroon, so I picked the colour of the wool so it will look good against it. The fact it’s my namesake colour is just a coincidence… 

I undo the rows until I can pick up the dropped stitches – I’m becoming an expert at this part of knitting! – and start again. 

Knit, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, turn 

Knit, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, turn 

As the scarf lengthens under my inexpert hands, I wonder what will Ron give me for Christmas? He bought Hermione perfume last year, but they’re only friends, as they both keep insisting. And they’re not even that at the moment, after Hermione attacked him with those birds after the Quidditch match. 

I can hear footsteps running up the stairs, and I hastily push the knitting under my bed out of sight. It may not be Parvati or Hermione, but I don’t want to take any chances. 

Glancing at the clock on my bedside table, I’m surprised to see that I’m nearly late for dinner. If I don’t find Ron before he gets to the Great Hall, I’ll be stuck sitting opposite Hermione, who’ll spend the entire meal scowling at me. She tries to pretend she’s not, but she is. And Parvati has noticed it too, so it’s not just me being extra-sensitive about it. 

 

Dinner – and a lovely hour with Ron in an empty classroom – is over, and I’m determined to finish the scarf tonight so I can send it by last parcel-post owl tomorrow. 

I give Parvati a lame excuse about needing my beauty-sleep, and dash up the stairs to the dormitory. Flinging open the door, I’m confronted with a tangled web of lavender wool twisted around every piece of furniture in the room. 

And in the middle of it is Hermione’s damned cat, looking at me smugly from the tattered remnants of Ron’s lovely scarf. 

I can feel the tears prickling at the backs of my eyes – all my hard work is ruined, and there is no way I can fix it by tomorrow. I resist the urge to pull out my wand and hex Crookshanks – he’s only a dumb animal, and Hermione adores him for some reason, ugly creature that he is. Instead I drop him into the corridor and firmly shut the door in his squashed face. 

Waving my wand around the room, I utter, “Untorqeo wool!” and in a few moments the wool is back into a neat ball. I push the needles through the centre of the ball and throw it into my trunk, annoyed now that all my hard work was wasted. 

I’m going to have to buy something for Ron now, and I have only tonight to find something. I collect all the magazines I can find in the room, and start flicking through them. 

There’s nothing suitable for him in Teen Witch, but I see a gold eyeshadow that Parvati would adore, so I make a note of it for her birthday. I turn next to Hope for the Best, a weekly magazine about the Chudley Cannons, hoping to find something perfect for Ron, as he loves the team so much. I shudder at the violent orange that screams at me from every page – it clashes dreadfully with Ron’s hair, and makes me look positively sallow. Why can’t he follow one of the green or blue teams? They would go so much better with my skin tone. 

Turning to the last page, I see the perfect gift! A large, glittery heart with the words “My Sweetheart” written across it. I check that I have enough money with me to pay for it – I do – and write out the order to be delivered to the Burrow for Christmas Day. 

It wasn’t my first choice as a present, but I think it’s better than the scarf now. I know he’ll love it!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N 2: The title fits Lavender in Ron's view as well, she's not his first "choice" for a girlfriend either. Poor Lav-Lav....


	7. The Right Choice  - Cedric Diggory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during the end of the Third Task in Goblet of Fire. I watched the DVD during the week, and couldn’t get Cedric’s choice out of my head. Dialogue in the fic is from pages 548-551 of the UK edition of Goblet of Fire

I advance cautiously through the maze, wand held defensively in front of me, According to the Point-Me spell, the Cup is somewhere to the left of me, but the path is continuing to the bear right, and I can’t find any openings. 

I hope that I can find the Cup before Harry does. Even though he stopped Krum from continuing to Crucio me, we’re still both after the same prize. Like we were with Cho, and I won there, and I’m going to win here as well. 

Finally, a break in the hedge to the right! I dash through it and see the Cup on the plinth about eighty yards away. I run towards it, so intent on reaching it that I can’t see anything else. 

A shriek from behind me prompts me to look to my left. Merlin! What has Hagrid been breeding in the Forest? I dive forwards in panic, and lose hold of my wand when I hit the ground. I scrabble desperately forwards, trying to reach it before the spider reaches me. 

I can hear someone – it must be Harry, he’s the only one left in here – shouting spells at the spider. They’re not doing anything; the hairs standing on the back of my neck tell me it’s looming over me. 

More shouting, and the sense of menace is gone. I can hear the spider scuttling away from me, and my fingers finally grasp my wand. I point it blindly at the spider, and shout “Stupefy!” at the same time as Harry. The spider keels over, flattening a section of the maze and lies there, twitching several legs. 

I can’t see Harry and for a horrible moment think that the spider has fallen on him. A terrible irony: he survives a Killing Curse, only to be squashed flat by a giant spider. I shout to him and am relieved to hear him shout back that he’s okay. 

The Cup is only a few feet away. I only have to take two steps and reach out my hand, and the honour and glory is mine. 

“Take it, then. Go on, take it. You’re there,” Harry gasps, holding the hedge to keep himself upright. 

Suddenly I can’t do it. Harry’s the reason I’ve got so far in the Tournament, and it wouldn’t be right if I took the Cup from him. I take a deep breath and say with a bit of regret, “You take it. You should win. That’s twice you’ve saved my neck in here.” 

Harry glares at me. “That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” he snaps. “The one who reaches the Cup first gets the points. That’s you. I’m telling you, I’m not going to win any races on this leg.” 

His leg? I look down and see that his robes are torn and covered in some type of black gooey substance. This decides me; Harry should be the winner, and he would have been if he hadn’t saved me from the spider. 

“No,” I state, moving away from the Cup to make my decision perfectly clear. Harry should win, and ++he can’t say anything to change my mind now. 

“Stop being noble. Just take it, then we can get out of here.” 

This stops me for a moment. Am I being noble? I don’t think so, Dad taught me early to do what was right, and giving up my chance at glory is the right thing to do here. The best of the Champions was always Harry; he tried to save the other hostages in the Second Task, even though it meant coming last, and he helped all of us in the maze as well. He deserves to be Triwizard Champion. 

I keep saying no in the face of Harry’s continued arguments. I’m determined that he will be Champion, and that’s final. 

My attention is caught when Harry says, “Both of us.” 

“What?” I can’t believe he’s offering me a chance to be Champion as well. 

“We take it at the same time. It’s still a Hogwarts victory. We’ll tie for it.” 

I stutter, “You – you sure?” 

“Yeah. Yeah… we’ve helped each other out, haven’t we? We both got here. Let’s just take it together.” 

He is. He’s offering me a share in the fame he already enjoys. I can’t stop the grin from forming as I answer, “You’re on. Come here.” 

I loop Harry’s arm over my shoulders and help him limp over to the pedestal. We’ve made the choice to share the win, and it’s the right one. The honourable one. Hogwarts will still be the winning school, even if there are two names on the Cup. 

“On three right? One – two – three –“ Harry counts. 

We both grasp the handles on three. Yes, it is the right choice to make to share the win.


	8. An Unconscious Decision

She fusses over the two of them like an anxious mother: making sure they’ve done their homework, are on time for classes, and go to bed on time. She doesn’t need to make sure they eat properly, it’s usually the other way around. I’ve noticed that if she hasn’t left the Library by five minutes to six, it will be a certainty that at five minutes past six, her friend Ron will be at her desk, packing her books into her satchel and lecturing her about working too hard. It’s never Harry that comes to get her, only Ron. 

It was a surprise to me when Hermione agreed to go to the Yule Ball with me. I had asked with only a faint hope that neither Harry nor Ron was already taking her. But she blushed and stammered and said that no one had asked her yet. And then she begged me not to say anything to anyone about it, as she knew they would tease her terribly, especially Ron. 

We had a wonderful night, once we could ignore the black looks from Ron whenever either of us looked his way. I did wonder why Hermione didn’t want to go and talk to him and Harry, but when I mentioned it she muttered about ‘fraternizing’ and ‘enemies’, and wouldn’t talk about it any more. 

After that night, I found it harder to spend any time with Hermione without Ron turning up with pleas for her to help him with his homework, or studying, or Harry’s Egg. And more often than not, she would go happily with him, all the while lecturing him over whatever excuse he had used. 

Even though she is the person I would miss the most – to her intense embarrassment – I know that for Hermione, Harry and Ron come before anything else, and there is nothing I can do to change it. I have to accept her decision, conscious or unconscious, that I will always be a distant third to them.


	9. A Promise, Once Made - Tonks

_“Imp, this is Remus. He needs a bit of looking after. You’ll do that right? I’m depending on you.”_

_“I promise, Sirius.”_

I never realised just how binding that promise was until this year. Sirius had no idea what he had started that summer. He had just been looking for an easy way to keep a bored child amused and foisting me onto Remus meant that he didn’t have to do it. Oh, he spent time with me, but only if James was occupied with Lily, and he couldn’t think of anything else to do. But it was Remus who would always put aside whatever he was doing to go along with whatever scheme I had dreamed up. He must have been awfully bored, but he never let me know it. 

But being bored by a small girl’s schemes would have to be better – and safer – that what he has been doing for the Order since Sirius died. I’ve spent most of this year terrified that he wasn’t going to be able to keep fooling Fenrir and the other werewolves, and I’d hear one day that he’d been killed. And he worries himself that the longer he stays with them, the harder it will be to keep the wolf at bay. 

And we left things – our relationship – so undecided as well. Or really, Remus has made a decision for the both of us, and I’m trying to convince him that none of the things he believes to be important actually matter to me. Underneath that quiet exterior lies a stubborn streak a mile wide. Except that I’m just as stubborn – bloody-minded, according to Dad – and I am going to win in the end. It’s convincing him that he is worth all the love I have to give him, and that I truly don’t care that he’s older, or poor, or a werewolf, that is the difficult thing. But I shall keep persevering; I love all of him, not just the socially-acceptable bits. 

Because for me, a promise, once made, is for keeps. 


End file.
